Editing Art (section)

==Theory==
{{Main|Aesthetics}}
Before Modernism, aesthetics in Western art was greatly concerned with achieving the appropriate balance between different aspects of [[Realism (arts)|realism]] or truth to nature and the [[Idealism|ideal]]; ideas as to what the appropriate balance is have shifted to and fro over the centuries. This concern is largely absent in other traditions of art. The aesthetic theorist [[John Ruskin]], who championed what he saw as the naturalism of [[J. M. W. Turner|J.&nbsp;M.&nbsp;W. Turner]], saw art's role as the communication by artifice of an essential truth that could only be found in nature.<ref>"go to nature in all [[singleness of heart]], rejecting nothing and selecting nothing, and scorning nothing, believing all things are right and good, and rejoicing always in the truth". [[John Ruskin|Ruskin, John]]. ''[[Modern Painters]]'', Volume I, 1843. London: Smith, Elder and Co.</ref>

The definition and evaluation of art has become especially problematic since the 20th century. [[Richard Wollheim]] distinguishes three approaches to assessing the aesthetic value of art: the [[Aesthetic realism|Realist]], whereby aesthetic quality is an absolute value independent of any human view; the [[Objectivity (philosophy)|Objectivist]], whereby it is also an absolute value, but is dependent on general human experience; and the [[Aesthetic relativism|Relativist position]], whereby it is not an absolute value, but depends on, and varies with, the human experience of different humans.<ref>Wollheim 1980, ''Essay VI''. pp. 231–239.</ref>

===Arrival of Modernism===
[[File:Piet Mondriaan, 1930 - Mondrian Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow.jpg|thumb|''[[Composition with Red Blue and Yellow]]'' (1930) by [[Piet Mondrian]] (Dutch, 1872–1944)]]
The arrival of [[Modernism]] in the late 19th century led to a radical break in the conception of the function of art,<ref>[[Griselda Pollock]], ''Differencing the Canon''. Routledge, London & New York, 1999. {{ISBN|0-415-06700-6}}</ref> and then again in the late 20th century with the advent of [[Postmodern art|postmodernism]]. [[Clement Greenberg]]'s 1960 article "Modernist Painting" defines modern art as "the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself".<ref name = "Frascina">''Modern Art and Modernism: A Critical Anthology''. ed. Francis Frascina and Charles Harrison, 1982.</ref> Greenberg originally applied this idea to the Abstract Expressionist movement and used it as a way to understand and justify flat (non-illusionistic) abstract painting:
<blockquote>Realistic, naturalistic art had dissembled the medium, using art to conceal art; modernism used art to call attention to art. The limitations that constitute the medium of painting—the flat surface, the shape of the support, the properties of the pigment—were treated by the Old Masters as negative factors that could be acknowledged only implicitly or indirectly. Under Modernism these same limitations came to be regarded as positive factors, and were acknowledged openly.<ref name = "Frascina" /></blockquote> After Greenberg, several important art theorists emerged, such as [[Michael Fried]], [[T. J. Clark (historian)|T.&nbsp;J.&nbsp;Clark]], [[Rosalind Krauss]], [[Linda Nochlin]] and [[Griselda Pollock]] among others. Though only originally intended as a way of understanding a specific set of artists, Greenberg's definition of modern art is important to many of the ideas of art within the various art movements of the 20th century and early 21st century.<ref name="Harris2005">{{cite book|author=Jonathan P. Harris|title=Writing Back to Modern Art: After Greenberg, Fried, and Clark|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_TzAIu3LziIC|year=2005|publisher=Psychology Press|isbn=978-0-415-32429-8|access-date=28 May 2018|archive-date=5 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190805225429/https://books.google.com/books?id=_TzAIu3LziIC|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Holt2001">{{cite book|author=David Kenneth Holt|title=The Search for Aesthetic Meaning in the Visual Arts: The Need for the Aesthetic Tradition in Contemporary Art Theory and Education|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VWedB7SA-KMC|year=2001|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|isbn=978-0-89789-773-0|access-date=28 May 2018|archive-date=5 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190805225429/https://books.google.com/books?id=VWedB7SA-KMC|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[Pop art]]ists like [[Andy Warhol]] became both noteworthy and influential through work including and possibly [[cultural critic|critiquing popular culture]], as well as the [[art world]]. Artists of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s expanded this technique of self-criticism beyond ''high art'' to all cultural image-making, including fashion images, [[comics]], [[billboards]] and [[pornography]].<ref name="Gemünden1998">{{cite book|author=Gerd Gemünden|title=Framed Visions: Popular Culture, Americanization, and the Contemporary German and Austrian Imagination|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7Mpfn_pue34C|year=1998|publisher=University of Michigan Press|isbn=978-0-472-08560-6|page=43|access-date=28 May 2018|archive-date=5 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190805225428/https://books.google.com/books?id=7Mpfn_pue34C|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=The New Yorker|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9BcnAQAAIAAJ|year=2004|publisher=F-R Publishing Corporation|page=84|access-date=28 May 2018|archive-date=5 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190805225428/https://books.google.com/books?id=9BcnAQAAIAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref>

Duchamp once proposed that art is any activity of any kind-everything. However, the way that only certain activities are classified today as art is a social construction.<ref name="Duchamp Interview Clip">{{YouTube|haon2DXWvLk|Duchamp Two Statements}}{{Dead link|date=May 2016}}</ref> There is evidence that there may be an element of truth to this. In ''[[The Invention of Art: A Cultural History]]'', Larry Shiner examines the construction of the modern system of the arts, i.e. fine art. He finds evidence that the older system of the arts before our modern system (fine art) held art to be any skilled human activity; for example, Ancient Greek society did not possess the term ''art'', but [[techne]]. Techne can be understood neither as art or craft, the reason being that the distinctions of art and [[craft]] are historical products that came later on in human history. Techne included painting, sculpting and music, but also cooking, medicine, [[horsemanship]], [[geometry]], carpentry, [[prophecy]], and farming, etc.<ref name="BurgueteLam2011">{{cite book|author1=Maria Burguete|author2=Lui Lam|title=Arts: A Science Matter|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zKmND2ImrGUC|year=2011|publisher=World Scientific|isbn=978-981-4324-93-9|page=74|access-date=28 May 2018|archive-date=5 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190805225428/https://books.google.com/books?id=zKmND2ImrGUC|url-status=live}}</ref>

===New Criticism and the "intentional fallacy"===
Following Duchamp during the first half of the 20th century, a significant shift to general aesthetic theory took place which attempted to apply aesthetic theory between various forms of art, including the literary arts and the visual arts, to each other. This resulted in the rise of the [[New Criticism]] school and debate concerning ''the intentional fallacy''. At issue was the question of whether the aesthetic intentions of the artist in creating the work of art, whatever its specific form, should be associated with the criticism and evaluation of the final product of the work of art, or, if the work of art should be evaluated on its own merits independent of the intentions of the artist.<ref name="Waugh2006">{{cite book|author=Patricia Waugh|author-link=Patricia Waugh|title=Literary Theory and Criticism: An Oxford Guide|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7LXMA_7Ko9YC|year=2006|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-929133-5|page=171|access-date=28 May 2018|archive-date=5 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190805225427/https://books.google.com/books?id=7LXMA_7Ko9YC|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Colebrook1997">{{cite book|author=Claire Colebrook|author-link=Claire Colebrook|title=New Literary Histories: New Historicism and Contemporary Criticism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aT-8AAAAIAAJ|year=1997|publisher=Manchester University Press|isbn=978-0-7190-4987-3|page=221|access-date=28 May 2018|archive-date=5 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190805225427/https://books.google.com/books?id=aT-8AAAAIAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref>

In 1946, [[William K. Wimsatt]] and [[Monroe Beardsley]] published a classic and controversial New Critical essay entitled "[[Intentional Fallacy|The Intentional Fallacy]]", in which they argued strongly against the relevance of an [[Authorial intentionality|author's intention]], or "intended meaning" in the analysis of a literary work. For Wimsatt and Beardsley, the words on the page were all that mattered; importation of meanings from outside the text was considered irrelevant, and potentially distracting.<ref name="Roholt2013">{{cite book|author=Tiger C. Roholt|title=Key Terms in Philosophy of Art|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=US6aAAAAQBAJ|year=2013|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing|isbn=978-1-4411-3246-8|page=161|access-date=28 May 2018|archive-date=5 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190805225427/https://books.google.com/books?id=US6aAAAAQBAJ|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Hick2017">{{cite book|author=Darren Hudson Hick|title=Introducing Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=L_S4DgAAQBAJ|year=2017|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing|isbn=978-1-350-00691-1|access-date=28 May 2018|archive-date=5 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190805225426/https://books.google.com/books?id=L_S4DgAAQBAJ|url-status=live}}</ref>

In another essay, "[[Affective fallacy|The Affective Fallacy]]", which served as a kind of sister essay to "The Intentional Fallacy" Wimsatt and Beardsley also discounted the reader's personal/emotional reaction to a literary work as a valid means of analyzing a text. This fallacy would later be repudiated by theorists from the [[reader-response]] school of literary theory. Ironically, one of the leading theorists from this school, [[Stanley Fish]], was himself trained by New Critics. Fish criticizes Wimsatt and Beardsley in his 1970 essay "Literature in the Reader".<ref>Leitch, Vincent B., et al., eds. ''The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism''. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001.</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Fish|first=Stanley|date=Autumn 1970|title=Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics|jstor=468593|journal=New Literary History|volume=2|issue=1|pages=123–162|doi=10.2307/468593}}</ref>

As summarized by [[Berys Gaut]] and Paisley Livingston in their essay "The Creation of Art": "Structuralist and post-structuralists theorists and critics were sharply critical of many aspects of New Criticism, beginning with the emphasis on aesthetic appreciation and the so-called autonomy of art, but they reiterated the attack on biographical criticisms' assumption that the artist's activities and experience were a privileged critical topic."<ref>Gaut and Livingston, ''The Creation of Art'', p. 3.</ref> These authors contend that: "Anti-intentionalists, such as formalists, hold that the intentions involved in the making of art are irrelevant or peripheral to correctly interpreting art. So details of the act of creating a work, though possibly of interest in themselves, have no bearing on the correct interpretation of the work."<ref name="Gaut and Livingston, p.6">Gaut and Livingston, p. 6.</ref>

Gaut and Livingston define the intentionalists as distinct from formalists stating that: "Intentionalists, unlike formalists, hold that reference to intentions is essential in fixing the correct interpretation of works." They quote [[Richard Wollheim]] as stating that, "The task of criticism is the reconstruction of the creative process, where the creative process must in turn be thought of as something not stopping short of, but terminating on, the work of art itself."<ref name="Gaut and Livingston, p.6"/>

==="Linguistic turn" and its debate===
The end of the 20th century fostered an extensive debate known as the [[linguistic turn]] controversy, or the "innocent eye debate" in the philosophy of art. This debate discussed the encounter of the work of art as being determined by the relative extent to which the conceptual encounter with the work of art dominates over the perceptual encounter with the work of art.<ref>''Philosophy for Architecture'', Branco Mitrovic, 2012.</ref>

Decisive for the linguistic turn debate in art history and the humanities were the works of yet another tradition, namely the [[structuralism]] of [[Ferdinand de Saussure]] and the ensuing movement of [[poststructuralism]]. In 1981, the artist [[Mark Tansey]] created a work of art titled ''The Innocent Eye'' as a criticism of the prevailing climate of disagreement in the philosophy of art during the closing decades of the 20th century. Influential theorists include [[Judith Butler]], [[Luce Irigaray]], [[Julia Kristeva]], [[Michel Foucault]] and [[Jacques Derrida]]. The power of language, more specifically of certain rhetorical tropes, in art history and historical discourse was explored by [[Hayden White]]. The fact that language is {{em|not}} a transparent medium of thought had been stressed by a very different form of [[philosophy of language]] which originated in the works of [[Johann Georg Hamann]] and [[Wilhelm von Humboldt]].<ref>''Introduction to Structuralism'', Michael Lane, Basic Books University of Michigan, 1970.</ref> [[Ernst Gombrich]] and [[Nelson Goodman]] in his book ''[[Languages of Art|Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols]]'' came to hold that the conceptual encounter with the work of art predominated exclusively over the perceptual and visual encounter with the work of art during the 1960s and 1970s.<ref>''[[Languages of Art|Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols]]''. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976. Based on his 1960–61 [[John Locke lectures]].</ref> He was challenged on the basis of research done by the Nobel prize winning psychologist [[Roger Sperry]] who maintained that the human visual encounter was not limited to concepts represented in language alone (the linguistic turn) and that other forms of psychological representations of the work of art were equally defensible and demonstrable. Sperry's view eventually prevailed by the end of the 20th century with aesthetic philosophers such as [[Nick Zangwill]] strongly defending a return to moderate aesthetic formalism among other alternatives.<ref>Nick Zangwill, "Feasible Aesthetic Formalism", ''Nous'', December 1999, pp. 610–629.</ref>